The Wonder That's Keeping the Stars Apart
by ragtime tune
Summary: Everywhere will be grey, but you, no, you will see light. Melchior and Anna as springtimes pass.


**The Wonder That's Keeping the Stars Apart**, G. Melchior (in plain text), Anna (_in italics_). The seasons change quickly, too quickly, but you keep summer with you, hold it tightly. Title from E.E. Cummings' "i carry your heart with me."

* * *

Later, it will feel like a dream. This hand pushing the blade from your hand, these fingers clasped around your own. That feeling, deep in your stomach; the shock of loss. That feeling, that sinking feeling, of finding yourself in the darkness. You will rub the back of your hand against your eyes to will the tears away. It will be hard, so hard, to try to forget the pain. You will ache all over with the memory of Wendla's tiny hand pressing against yours, the memory of Moritz's voice telling you that all is forgiven. You won't remember the words you said, but they will be important. You won't remember the words you heard, but they will sink into your bones.

_The world will be like perpetual November. The cold will go through your skin and into your blood, your heart, the very center of you. And yet the sun will still shine out of you, making you glow. Your eyes, blue as the sky, will be filled with hope, brimming with possibility. Everywhere will be grey, but you, no, you will see light. You will look at the pastor in church and wonder how you ever believed his words. You will look at your mother and father and wonder how they could have kept the world from you. You will look at yourself and wonder how you can even think these things, how much of you is new. _

Your feet will feel the ache from running. Still, you won't slow down. Everything in your life has been so slow, so sluggish, and you will make up for lost time short of breath. Sleep will come when you are too exhausted to keep running, and you will rest fitfully at the base of trees, in sun kissed meadows, on a riverbank. Everywhere you rest, you will be reminded of something: the sun in Wendla's hair, the tilt of Moritz's smile. You will catch a train to Berlin, sneak onto it and sit with your head against the window and dream with your eyes wide open. The ghosts will still linger there, in your eyes. Moritz and Wendla will sit with you, both inside you and out, their reflections in the glass. You will be with them, alongside them, for them.

_You will wear pink ribbons in your hair because they remind you of sunnier days. The flowers will still bloom into the warmth of summer, and you will still sing as you walk hand-in-hand with Martha. You will go to leave flowers on Wendla's grave and Moritz's grave, bits of summertime. And you will see Georg Zirschnitz there, wiping his nose with his handkerchief. You will think of all the days you did not speak to him in church, all the days you giggled behind your hand with Thea. He will look different, staring at the headstone that says _Here rests in God Moritz Stiefel_ like it will tell him the secrets of the universe._

But you will not be so young to think that anymore, and neither will Georg. Instead, you will find the secrets of the universe in the catch of his calloused fingers against yours. 

A feeling that you can't describe will linger on the air. You will lay in bed and dream over and over again of the graveyard, of the ghosts that haunted you there. You will wake and feel different, reminded of what you can be. And you will be it.

You will have a wife and a daughter with curly brown hair. They will make you think of Wendla and what she could have been. You will think that she would have been such a good mother, so caring, so warm. You will think of what you could have been together, in a small house hidden by trees. Your wife will smile, and your daughter will laugh. They will remind you of how much you have grown, changed, become different. You will go to the countryside together, your family where secrets are not kept, to a village that does not have memories etched into it, living in its walls. Your daughter will run in the grass and pick flowers. You will make new memories of springtime.

_You will wonder, in small and quiet moments, where Melchior is. You won't be able to imagine him as anything but great. You will think of him with a book in his hand like he always had, pen tucked into his pocket to scribble something down. You will try to picture him walking up the street, but he was always too big for this small town. He never could blend in like he was supposed to. You will know, even though it's impossible to know, even though it shouldn't be anything more than a shimmering hope, that he is well. You will know that he couldn't possibly be anything else._

In a whisper, you will sing your children lullabies so they dream of peaceful things. You will press kisses to their heads. You'll let them be free, and they'll grow strong and tall, like weeds, like wildflowers, with nothing to stop them. You will look out from your front window and see them bloom. They will unfurl into the morning sun. 

There will be moments, small and quiet, when the dream feels so real you could touch it. You'll see Wendla's heart reflected in your wife's smile, in secretive glances passed between children. You'll see the long days of summer spent with Moritz in your daughter's eyes, the curls of her hair, in her dimpled cheeks.

It will take your breath away, sometimes, when you aren't expecting the phantoms. They are so strong, so steadfast. You will look in the mirror and be overcome with the dreams, the memories, all blended together. Because when you look (fleeting glance), when you see (quickly and breathlessly), it will be them. In your own eyes, your own strength, the curve of your jaw, the set of your shoulders — they will be there.


End file.
